The killer satire of James Gillray

‘I hope the day will never come when I shall neither be the subject of calumny or ridicule, for then I shall be neglected and forgotten’, is how Samuel Johnson greeted the news that James Gillray had caricatured him as Dr Pomposo. In Georgian London, a caricature was a fast-track to celebrity. And, as described by one contemporary observer, the print shop window was ‘the temple of fame in grotesque’.

Gillray was chiefly responsible for this. When he emerged on to the print publishing scene in the 1780s, the British art of ‘caricatura’ – an Italian import – was in its infancy. It grew up fast. Gillray, who had misspent part of his youth as a strolling player, invented a wittily scripted visual theatre of the absurd, uniting brilliant draughtsmanship with a fluency in mirror writing that rivalled Leonardo’s. It was a killer combination.

I emerged from the exhibition breathless with astonishment at the daring of his attacks

For modern audiences, the problem with Gillray is that without a grasp of the politics of the period, his best shots are liable to fly over their heads.